Clarihon blog

• Welcome to Clarihon Web Service’s blog

How often is it that when a business looks for a product or service they need or want the very best?

Having the very best might mean having to wait and it will almost certainly mean paying a premium. Most of us settle for the ‘very good’ and someone we are happy working with.

Indeed that ability to work well with someone, especially if it will be a long-term relationship, could be the most important factor.

We don’t strive to be the best – just very good at what we do. More importantly we believe strongly that a genuine desire to make a difference for our clients, dealing with them honestly and ensuring that they understand their options and what they mean is much, much more important.

Business ethics are very important to us too. The company name comes from the two words CLARIty and HONesty.

Last week we turned down a gold-plated referral from a client to one of her clients – but we made sure that we still helped those clients.

The referral was to a catholic college. My Humanist beliefs meant that I wasn’t comfortable providing a service to a very strongly religious organisation. I also don’t think that religion and education should be mixed.

But that’s only my view and not one I want to force on other people.

I therefore approached a colleague and competitor (that I rate highly) to see if they would like the job. They were happy to do it so I contacted the possible client and arranged for this company to take our place at a pre-arranged meeting. They seemed surprised but happy.

As I write, the replacement company have had one successful meeting with the client and look well set to gain the contract.

It might not make sense to many other business people but it works for us!

Nigel

Apart from trying to visit your web site yourself, how do you know that it’s up and available?

All web site hosting companies, no matter how good they are, suffer some ‘down time’ at some time or other. Their link to the Internet might be broken or one or more of their web servers (holding your web site) might have a technical issue.

If your web site is simply an on-line brochure and you know you don’t get many visitors, it probably isn’t a problem.

If your web site is a shop, and the main source of your business income, it’s a big problem!

So how can you be told when your web site is ‘down’ or otherwise unavailable to the outside world?

Fortunately there are many companies offering free or cheap ways to do this.

Essentially they will set up tracking and monitoring tools that check certain aspects of your web site. At it’s most basic this might be a simple attempt to do what you do with your browser when you try to load your web site’s Home page. It could be much more complex and test the working of your e-mail system or a number of other aspects of your web site.

When there’s a problem, you’ll get sent and e-mail and/or an SMS alert to your phone telling you of the problem. You can then check with your web site people or the hosting company to check that they are aware of the problem, what’s causing it and the likely resolution time.

The basic service is usually free and enhanced services are available from as little as a couple of pounds per month.

A sample of companies offering web site monitoring is below:

http://alertra.com/

http://www.ippatrol.co.uk/

http://www.montastic.com/

http://www.siteuptime.com/

http://www.serviceuptime.com/

http://www.watchmouse.co.uk/en/

So if the availability of your web site is important to your business, you can now be alerted to any problems and take the necessary action.

Having taken over the maintenance of the China Fleet site in November last year, we have been busy working on raising the site’s profile on the web.   The areas we have been working on are:

• making sure individual pages are ‘optimised’ with the right phrases and tags to the pictures, specific fields and links
• removing duplicate content in the page titles and descriptions
• improving the incoming links (‘link building’)

All of these are factors in ‘Search Engine Optimisation’ (SEO) and contribute to improving the site’s ranking on Google.  Much of this work is ongoing as SEO is not an exercise you do once and think that a site will look after itself.  The phrases people use for searching will change over time and the way search engines evaluate sites for ranking also changes, so these factors need to be taken into account and amended where relevant.

In addition to regular SEO and maintenance on the site, we also do specific projects to improve the way users interact with the site.  A recent example of this is the Activity Timetable that has been incorporated on the Leisure page.

We are pleased to report that there has been a notable improvement in both the number of visitors to the site and its Google ranking for targetted key phrases over the last 6 months.

If you think we can help you with your SEO or site maintenance, please get in touch!

Everyone gets Spam sooner or later. Anyone who’s given out a business card, bought or registered anything on-line or has an address visible on their web site is almost certain to receive Spam at some time. The more you’re active on the web and e-mail, the more Spam you’re likely to get.

There are ways of limiting the problem though.

One way is to protect your main e-mail address(es) but giving out a ‘disposable’ or ‘virtual’ address instead.

If you have control of your web site hosting and/or e-mail facilities you can create what’s known as ‘forwarding addresses’. These appear as normal e-mail addresses but don’t have a real mailbox behind them. They simply ‘redirect’ to a real e-mail id and mailbox.

For example, I can create a mail id info@clarihon.co.uk. If I create it as a ‘virtual’ or ‘forwarding’ address, I can redirect mail to this new address on to my REAL address, nigel@clarihon.co.uk. That way I only have to check one mailbox but receive from 2 mail ids. I can then give the info@clarihon.co.uk address out to the wide world and keep my main address for sending and to give to trusted people.

At some time though, the info@clarihon.co.uk address will get into the hands of Spammers and I’ll start to get Spam.

Assuming I can make the change easily on my web site and my e-mail accounts, all I have to do is delete info@clarihon.co.uk and create info1@clarihon.co.uk, or admin@clarihon.co.uk etc.

I can also create different ‘virtual’ or ‘forwarding’ addresses for different aspects of my business and on-line dealings. One for shopping online (shopping@clarihon.co.uk), one for registering at on-line business directories (directory@clarihon.co.uk) and so on.

I can also create one for specific people or companies I deal with – like amazon@clarihon.co.uk for example. That way, if I get Spam via that address I’ll know where the Spammers got it from!

Of course, having a good Spam filter will reduce much of the hassle you get and it depends on how much of a problem Spam is for you but the use of ‘virtual’ or ‘forwarding’ e-mail addresses is another string to your anti-Spam bow.

When you’re out of the office, how do you access e-mail?

If you have a Blackberry or iPhone, you’re probably fine. If you access the Internet via WiFi, you’re also probably a happy bunny.

But what if you use a mobile phone, or a ‘dongle’ from one of the mobile phone suppliers?

Oh dear, oh dear…..

It’s all well and good when you want to send e-mail from your O2, Vodafone, 3 account etc, but not when you want to send from your business e-mail account – like nigel@clarihon.co.uk.

All is not lost though – unless you’ve got Orange (more about that later).

The first thing to realise is that e-mail from your laptop of mobile device needs to go out via some sort of ‘outgoing’ e-mail server. At home, or on your home PC it would be mail.clarihon.co.uk or similar. On the move, using a mobile phone or dongle this is very unlikely to work.

Mobile phone operators almost always restrict you to using THEIR outgoing servers – often referred to as SMTP servers. If you change the outgoing server setting in your e-mail account set-up it’ll probably work. For the common mobile providers the list of settings is below:

smtp.o2.co.uk
smtp.vodafone.net
smtp.t-email.co.uk
smtp.orange.co.uk
smtp.three.co.uk

For virgin, Talk Talk etc, please check their Support web sites or call them.

For Orange users the ‘fun’ doesn’t end there. Another setting needs to be changed. It’s the SMTP ‘port’ and it MIGHT work if set to 587.

For further information on the ‘challenges’ faced when roaming with e-mail have a look on Google and read the articles here:

http://www.knowyourmobile.com/info/1310/use_our_internet_setting_chart_to_setup_email_and_the_internet_on_your_mobile.html
http://www.geekgirls.com/articles/2010/03/portable-smtp-take-your-email-with-you/

Lastly, I don’t think it’s possible, in Outlook at least, to store two configurations for the same e-mail account, one for home and one for mobile, and switch between them. You need to edit the the outgoing server configuration depending whether you’re using your home broadband connection or the mobile one.

The joys of IT eh?…..